Robert Ashley

Reviews

25 Points: Atalanta (Acts of God)

ataphoca_thumb_l_bks-recent-06-Atalanta_coverAtalanta (Acts of God)
by Robert Ashley
Burning Books, 2011
208 pages / $25.00 buy from Amazon or SPD

 

 

 

 

 

 

24. When I began this review Robert Ashley was alive. In light of his death, I feel a compulsion to redraft and make these twenty-five points address something more. I want to talk about seeing Foreign Experiences and Lectures to Be Sung performed, about composition and improvisation, contemporary opera, and the intersection of music and language. Ashley’s work is full of good discussions. I’m attracted to the just-some-dude delivery style and storytelling aspects in the operas. One of my composer pals can’t follow the stories at all, and seems obsessed with the involuntary speech in Ashley’s work. Ashley’s work is so dense, and there are so many lessons that I take away from his work as a performer and writer. It’s hard to limit the discussion, especially given this kind of retrospective appreciation and the span of his work.

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3 Comments
April 22nd, 2014 / 12:00 pm

In memory of Robert Ashley, 1930–2014

Robert-ashley

I first learned about Robert Ashley through Peter Greenaway, thanks to his Four American Composers series. I rented all four videos because I was interested in John Cage and Philip Glass. I didn’t know who Meredith Monk was, or Robert Ashley.

As it turns out, the episode on Ashley interested me the most. I didn’t understand the opera being discussed, Perfect Lives, but I knew I had to hear and watch the whole thing. I took to the internet and discovered that I could order it directly from Lovely Music, on VHS. I did so. It cost me $100—but I had to hear it.

Few people I knew at the time had ever heard of Robert Ashley. When I moved to Illinois and met Mark Tardi and Jeremy M. Davies, we bonded in part over our shared love for Perfect Lives, “an opera for television” made in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It’s still not widely known. It’s still never been broadcast in its entirety in the US. But I’m not alone alone in regarding it one of the greatest operas and long poems in the English language. (John Cage wrote of it: “What about the Bible? And the Koran? It doesn’t matter. We have Perfect Lives.”)

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Music / 5 Comments
March 4th, 2014 / 3:29 pm

Announcing Requited #10

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Zoe Nelson, “Cat’s Out of the Bag (a-side)” (2013, mixed media)

I’m pleased to announce that the tenth issue of Requited is now online and contains:

Furthermore, in the journal’s rapidly-growing archives, you’ll find poetry by Molly Gaudry and Nate Pritts; fiction by James Tadd Adcox, Jimmy Chen, Jac Jemc, Tim Jones-Yelvington, and Suzanne Scanlon; nonfiction by William Bowers, Jeremy M. Davies, Julianne Hill, Steve Katz, Mark Rappaport, Keiler Roberts, Viktor Shklovsky, and Curtis White; interviews with Robert Ashley and Vanessa Place—and other wonderful things.

Enjoy!

Author News / 2 Comments
January 23rd, 2014 / 7:56 pm

Announcing Requited Journal #8

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It is my pleasure to tell you that Requited #8 is now online. This issue features:

Check it out!

. . .

I am the non-fiction and reviews editor for Requited and am always eager to consider submissions. Previously I’ve published work by William Bowers, Jeremy M. Davies, Julianne Hill, Steve Katz, Mark Rappaport, Keiler Roberts, Viktor Shklovsky, and Curtis White, as well as interviews with Robert Ashley, Vanessa Place, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Curtis White, and reviews by Daniel Green and Jeff Bursey.

Also, please do check out the Requited‘s steadily swelling archives, where you’ll find poetry by Molly Gaudry and Nate Pritts, fiction by James Tadd Adcox, Jimmy Chen, Jac Jemc, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Suzanne Scanlon, and (ahem) myself, as well as many other nice fine things.

Enjoy!

Author News / Comments Off on Announcing Requited Journal #8
February 19th, 2013 / 8:01 am

Reviews

Robert Ashley — Perfect Lives

Perfect Lives
by Robert Ashley
Dalkey Archive Press, 2011 (Reprint)
240 pages / $13.95  Buy from Amazon, Dalkey Archive

 

 

 

 

 

 

Premiering on television in 1984 and first published in book form in 1991, Perfect Lives is several texts at once: a comic opera libretto, a novel about a temporary bank heist, a blurb-billed epic poem ranging through small town Midwestern vernacular and Eastern metaphysics, and a kind of textual final resting place for the titular performance in the form of notes, a preface, a synopsis, some notation from the score, and an edited conversation with writer, composer and director Ashley during which he explains the genesis and outcome of the project. (Ashley: “I had this practice: I’d go into a room, close the door, and start singing.”) It’s a good thing that the book is several texts, because while it’s a success as an engaging epic (experimental) poem, it would be a stretch to call it a novel and as a libretto it leaves you having missed out on the three-hour television program that it became with no idea of what it sounded like unless you’re familiar with Ashley’s work and no idea what it looked like except for a still of the production on the cover of the book and a frontispiece featuring Ashley himself playing narrator. Ultimately the loss of context doesn’t make the text suffer because as a set of eight experimental poems obliquely describing a bank heist and an elopement among more metaphysical things it wins at being an engrossing read and at capturing small town Midwestern vernacular and widescreen philosophy in very crisp but entertainingly malformed ways.

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6 Comments
February 17th, 2012 / 1:00 am

Requited Journal #6

"Call and Response" by Adam Grossi

As the nonfiction & reviews editor of the online journal Requited, it’s my pleasure to announce that Issue 6 just went live. In the Essays section you’ll now find:

There’s also a new review: Jeff Bursey‘s take on J. Robert Lennon’s story collection Pieces for the Left Hand.

And much more!

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Author News & Craft Notes / 3 Comments
January 6th, 2012 / 9:01 am